With only a couple of days left till I fly to the USA to take on the Pacific Crest Trail I should be focusing all my effort on gear and prep and last minute chores, but no. What am I thinking of? Toothache.
Last Friday I started to get some mild soreness around my gum and by Sunday evening the pain was ghastly. Luckily, I was able to alleviate the pain with Ibuprofen, and get an emergency appointment this lunchtime, which established the problem was an abscess around an old bit of tooth left after an extraction ten years or more ago. This is a big relief, as it proved possible to drain the infection and hopefully with antibiotics clear thing seup, at least enough to fly and see what happens.
I had horrific scenarios in my mind on the scale of fracking for natural gas, but it turned out to be much serious. The dentist even laughed when I warned her she was more likely to be doing archaeology than dentistry in my mouth. Fingers crossed it doesn't bother me too much when I'm hiking, but at least there's a dentist every hundred yards or so in America. I checked on the internet, and there seems to be one at even the smallest settlement, so with luck I will be able to handle anything that comes up!
